Isabel Abreu
Isabel Abreu is a Senior Researcher working at GPlantS since 2007
Isabel Abreu is a biochemist with a PhD in Biochemistry granted by ITQB-UNL in 2002. She also was a Post-doc researcher at Rockfeller Univ. (USA).
Isabel is interested in studying the molecular basis and cellular consequences of post-translational protein modification (PTM), in particular SUMOylation. Currently, Isabel and her students are: (i) studying the regulation of the SUMOylation machinery, in response to abiotic stress; (ii) identifying SUMOylation targets and studying the function/structure consequences of SUMOylation.
Isabel is using the model plants Arabidopsis and rice to identify targets for protein-SUMOylation in response to drought stress, using proteomics. Additionally, she and her students are characterizing the mechanisms regulating SUMOylation levels and target-discrimination by studying how transcript levels and alternative-splicing isoforms of the rice SUMOylation machinery vary upon stress. Isabel is presently extending this study to Cork Oak by using bioinformatics tools to explore GPlantS previously obtained transcriptome-library collection (under the Portuguese Cork Oak Consortium effort). Ultimately, Isabel aims to use the obtained information to engineer increased drought-tolerance in plants and thus contribut to create new rice varieties better equipped to withstand water stress.
